


How they got it all

by galaxy_starshade



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Kidnapping, Battery City, Blood and Injury, Cars, Daring Escapes, Depression, Desert, Gen, Graphic Description, Guns, Happy Ending, Kidnapping, Korse's A+ Exterminating, Like, Mental Health Issues, The Fabulous Killjoys (Danger Days) Are Not MCR, Whump, Zones Culture and Customs (Fabulous Killjoys), Zones Religion and Lore (Fabulous Killjoys), a lot of blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27781990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxy_starshade/pseuds/galaxy_starshade
Summary: How Fun Ghoul got his scarHow Jet Star got his eyepatchHow Kobra Kid got his bikeHow Poison became PartyFun Ghoul gets kidnapped just as a mysterious prophecy seems to come true. Poison, Kobra Kid and a hurt Jet Star must do everything to find the Girl and save Ghoul. On the way, they will all have to face their personal demons.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul & Jet Star & Kobra Kid & Party Poison (Danger Days)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone !  
> Long time lurker in the Danger Days fandom, I finally decided to add my brick to the building ^^
> 
> I'm not a native English speaker, don't hesitate to correct me (i'm doing the best i can). also, I learnt English on the internet so I have no idea whatsoever as to which words are british english and which ones are american english (sorry if I use a mumbo jumbo of both).
> 
> This is (supposedly) going to be a long ride. At the moment I think I'm goint to update at least once a month, but the rhythm might drop down/go up as I progress in the story. (Also depending on work hehe)  
> Final notes : mind the warnings/tags (they might change as new chapters get published), this is an absolutely guaranteed happy ending story, and I hope you enjoy !

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prologue is in a general point of view, but the rest of the story will be in alternating points of view from the fab four.

The sun was scorching. No grain of sand, no stone, no leaf could escape its murderous glare (not that there were any leaves left in the desert; they had all died on their stems in the Helium Wars). Nothing moved; it was as if all life had disappeared. Only a dust covered gas station and a few cacti stood in the seemingly infinite expanse of yellow sand.

The windows of the gas station were all open; you could see a few hunched shadows moving animatedly, apparently not minding the oppressing heat.

Poison was gluing ripped comic pages to the ceiling, concentrating very hard as to not touch the hot metal. He had been working on his big "ceiling art", as he called it, for the last few days, and was only now adding the finishing touches. He had shed is blue leather jacket in favour of just his black and red undershirt, his long red hair dripping with sweat from the effort of standing on a chair on the tips of his toes.

Fun Ghoul was sitting at a half demolished table near Poison’s feet. He was trying to build a detonator for the pack of explosives he had found earlier near an abandoned white motorbike, but was currently only succeeding in making the room smell of molten plastic and unhappy metal. He had lost a chunk of his long black hair a few days ago, and was now sporting it only to the shoulders. He kept saying he was very happy with the result, since he had wanted to cut it anyway, but everywhere he went a terrible odour of burnt hair accompanied him.

Jet Star and Kobra Kid were at the counter, playing a game of “What are you cooking?”, which consisted of telling the other the most extravagant dishes while canning home-cooked mashed cacti. Jet Star kept shaking his curly hair away from his face, while Kobra Kid had slicked back his own blonde strands with his sweat.

All the windows were opened; every time there was the slightest breeze, everyone shut their mouth and just stood still, appreciating for a second the sweat cooling their skins under the effect of the gentle wind.

The days usually went like this; they only got out in the early mornings and late at night, when the light wasn’t as aggressive to their eyes and the temperatures were a bit more forgiving. They ate mostly mashed cacti, also called mashed greenatoes, and dog kibble, since it seemed to be the only form of food Battery City needed to import thus the only form of food passing through the desert. They stole everything they could from Drac-escorted convoys, selling the excess on the black market to buy what they couldn’t steal. Poison made collages and artwork, and Fun Ghoul tried to make explosives.

Poison suddenly tutted in obvious satisfaction, drawing the attention of the other three. He held out the last comic book page from his stack, showing it excitedly. “This is the last brick to my monument, guys ! A piece of art that will immortalise a sentiment that is already eternal!”

“Glue it already”, Kobra Kid said. He was used to the antics of his brother, but still wanted to see the finished work. Fun Ghoul watched in a badly hidden fascination as Poison placed the last piece, delicately patting it in place.

It was at that moment that all hell broke loose.

Every window suddenly vomited two or three Draculoids, guns blazing. Poison, in his surprise, hit his hand on the red hot metal sheets. Hissing in pain, he plunged behind an overturned table then drew his yellow ray gun. Jet Star and Kobra Kid ducked behind their counter, beginning to shoot whit their respective guns. Only Fun Ghoul took more than one second to find cover, and in that time, two blasts hit him, one in the shoulder and on in the leg. He collapsed with a soundless gasp, his open mouth exhaling air silently.

The other three began firing. Kobra Kid and Jet Star were taking the Dracs out with well adjusted shots, but Poison had burnt his dominant hand and was having trouble adjusting his aim. He refused to look in the direction of Fun Ghoul. At least the Dracs weren’t shooting him anymore now that he was down and unresponsive.

After only half a minute, the Killjoys were doing well; they had already taken down half of their assaillants, when the door of the station opened and a bald head made its entrance. Wearing a uniform of grey and white clothes, with ruffles at the neck and the wrists, a black ray gun in his right hand, he strode inside like he owned the place. Behind him was a full patrol of Draculoids. It was Korse.

“If he’s dead”, Poison screamed, “I swear to the Witch I will fucking kill you, Korse !”

“Rich of you to say that”, the bald man said, jerking his head towards Fun Ghoul, “since you attracted my attention. In a way, you are responsible for the demise of your dear companion.” He was unnervingly calm and possessed. The patrol of Dracs, responding to his silent order, began to walk in the direction of Fun Ghoul, protected by a wall of fire from the other white soldiers.

Poison tried to look over his table, trying to shoot Korse, but he had to quickly duck; a ray blast missed his head only by a few centimeters. At the same time, the patrol of Dracs lifted Fun Ghoul off the floor and backed away towards the door. Jet Star screamed in rage and sprang from behind the counter, shooting three of them in only a second, until a blast got him right in the head, throwing him back beside Kobra Kid. The dead Dracs were replaced by ones standing by the windows, one of them taking back Fun Ghoul’s legs that had been dropped in the firefight.

Korse looked at the remaining masked soldiers in the room. “Keep them here while we go back to Battery City”, he ordered. “Don’t be afraid to damage them a bit.” He then looked in the direction of the table. “See you later, Poison.”

A second after that, he was gone and cars were started, the sound of the motors quickly fading. The remaining Dracs in the room began to advance again, separating into two groups to isolate Poison from Kobra Kid and the unconscious Jet Star.

The brothers exchanged a glance and sprang from behind their respective covers, shooting manically at every withe clothed silhouette. Luckily, they had already taken a good chunk of them out before Korse had arrived. Unluckily, when all was said and done, and the brothers where surrounded only by corpses and a shaking Jet Star, it was much too late to be able to follow Korse, his minions, and Fun Ghoul, especially on foot and under the heat of the midday.

Wordlessly, Poison got in the back room to find the first aid kit while Kobra Kid tried to rouse Jet Star back into the land of the living.

The last page Poison had placed fell to the ground with a slight swishing sound, making the big middle finger in the direction of Battery City incomplete again.


	2. Chapter 1: Jumping in, jumping out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poison and Kobra Kid try to help Jet Star. There are decisions to take and news to receive.
> 
> Meanwhile, Fun Ghoul takes a ride with Korse and an unnamed Draculoid.

When Poison came back into the main room, Kobra was cradling Jet’s head on his lap, whispering useless reassurances to the unconscious Killjoy. Full of apprehension, the redhead approached the pair with measured steps. He gasped audibly when he actually saw the wound. Jet’s face was a mess of blood; it matted his hair to his skull and flowed in rivulets around his mouth. There was too much of it on and around the eye itself to see anything of the wound. Poison kneeled next to Kobra. With shaking hands, he opened the first aid kid, wondering what he could do. This much blood, and Jet still alive; the Dracs’ ray guns must have been set to the lowest setting, stunning without even cauterising the wounds. You could kill in the long term, but were still able to take prisoners if you could afford to give them medical attention. A Battery City tactic through and through.

Poison wasn’t a medic. Sunburn pains he knew how to alleviate; flesh wounds he knew who to sew up, but this, this he had no idea. HE felt like he had been landed in a bad dream where he had no skills in regard of what he had to do. At that moment, Jet mumbled incoherently about the red birds. Kobra kept his whispering very calm but glanced at Poison, urging him to do something. The redhead shook himself out of his thoughts, and settled on rinsing out the wound with a carefully measured portion of their clean water, to see what he had to work with.  
The reddened water dripped to the ground, dying Poison’s jeans the same colour as his hair, but now he could see Jet’s eye. It was actually less horrible than what he had first thought; the eye wasn’t completely destroyed; there was no clear liquid dripping from it. In fact, the blast had touched the skin two centimeters above it. Still, the pupil was totally dilated. The eyebrow was a mess of bloody and burnt flesh. That Poison knew how to treat. He applied a bit more fresh water to the burns in the hopes it wouldn’t get worse. Then he took a curved needle, passed it in a flame and threaded it. He carefully sewed up the open edges of the wound, trying not to stretch the eyebrow skin too much as to not rip the stitches, and create a deformation in Jet’s face. When that part was done, he shook a light in front of Jet’s pupil. The only response was him whimpering and tossing in Kobra’s hold. The pupil didn’t shrink at all. Silencing his worries, Poison bandaged the right side of Jet’s head, to at least keep the sand out of his wound.

“Will he lose the use of his eye?” Kobra asked.

“I’m not sure”, Poison answered. “The eye in itself doesn’t seem to have taken any physical damage, but it had no reflex to the light. The light from the blast must have hurt it, but I have no idea what to do to help. We’ll have to wait for Jet to awaken.”

Kobra sighed. “What do we do ? We can’t go after Ghoul on foot, and we can’t stay here. Korse knows we’re hidden here, he just has to take a few more Draculoids with him and he’ll have us captured easily. We can’t take another firefight like this.”

Poison shook his head. This was the only place Ghoul knew where to find them, and he was sure it was just a question of time as to when he would come back to them. “Ghoul’ll escape them and if we’re not here when he comes back, he won’t know where to find us. He’s hurt, he won’t be able to search for us in all the desert…”  
Kobra interrupted him. “Yeah, he’s hurt, Poison. That means he won’t be able to come back here, much less escape Korse and his Dracs. Face it, he’s not gonna be able to escape by himself. We need to go after him, but we can’t do that now.”

“He wasn’t that badly hurt, it was just the shock that —“

“He was down, Pois. He woke up in the middle of the firefight but he couldn’t even move. He won’t be able to do anything.”

Poison felt a very long shiver go up is spine. “No— He has to— He—“

“Listen, man, we’re going to go after him okay? We’re not abandoning him. But first we have to find a place to let Jet heal, because we won’t be able to save Ghoul with only us two. We need to be on maximum efficiency to be able to go into Bat City and get him out. So, you’re packing, and I’m going to try to get Jet to wake up."

Poison sighed and nodded. He got up and went into the backroom, where they kept their backpacks. He distributed the food, water and blankets between the four bags. Then came the difficult part. His and Kobra’s personal stuff were easy enough to sort into “to take” and “to abandon” piles; he needed the rest of his comic book pages, his nail polish and his paints (he was very proud to have three different colours; he had gone more than one day without eating to be able to trade for them). Kobra wanted to take the power glove he had been working on for two months and his pack of insulating screwdrivers. Jet’s favourite keepsakes were his bracelets, which he had on his wrists, and small multicoloured cords, which he used to make bracelets he could sell.

But Ghoul’s stuff was harder. He was a bit of a hoarder, keeping rocks because they had nice swirls of colours, collecting keepsakes and little gifts, way too much to put in only one backpack, that they would have to carry on top of their owns no less. He also had a pile of “useful stuff for later” which majorly consisted of dismantled explosives, burnt down electronic parts, and broken stuff he wanted to improve.

Poison’s throat was tight as he sorted stuff into the “to keep” and “to abandon” piles. He put a pack of C4, his collection of pcbs and his favorite FGPA in the to keep pile, along with a truly impressive stock of resistances and wires. He closed the bag, then hesitated. Ghoul deserved to keep nice things too. He finally added the pink and green rock he had previously decided to abandon. He just didn’t have the courage to imagine himself saying to Ghoul he had left it there, when he knew that he had picked it especially because it reminded him of the first time he had felt he was part of the team.

That had been at least a dozen of months before. Poison and Kobra had gotten out of Battery City together, and had found Jet a few weeks later. Ghoul had been the last stray to join their little group. For weeks, he had been wary, as if he waited for them to change their mind and stab him in the back. Then one night, while he was answering nature’s call, Ghoul had been bitten by a snake. He always said he didn’t remember the few days that had followed, when he was delirious with fever and the other three where searching for an anti-venom everywhere in the Zones, but Poison had heard him talk about it in his nightmares. They all knew he had them, but they didn’t talk about it, like they didn’t talk about theirs. Ghoul was alive, and he said he didn’t remember, and that was it. Still, Ghoul like to say that when he woke up with a clear mind for the first time in a week, he had known what they had done for him, and had never doubted their loyalty since then.

When Poison was finished with his sorting, he came back towards Kobra and Jet. Neither had moved. The blonde killjoy has his lips pinched, his eyes full with worry; the curly one was relaxed, dead to the world. Poison sat beside his brother.

“Where are we going?” The blonde asked.

“We should try to go to Zone 4. That’s where there are the less Dracs patrols in general.”

“Yeah, because of the fucking acid rains. Do you really want to go there?”

Acid rains were, in a contradictory way, a perk and a disadvantage of any place you could live. They meant less patrols, but they also meant you needed to be able to reach cover in a matter of minutes if the sky began to darken. In the first week of their escape from Battery City, the brothers had seen the body of someone that had been unable to reach shelter during an acid rain. The corpse hadn’t had a jacket, and seeing the position in which they were, they had tried to cover their face and arms by stretching the cloth of their T-shirt, but it hadn’t been enough. Their skin had literally boiled on their face and arms.

The brothers themselves had a few scars. Poison had nasty withe splashes on his forearms, from when he had covered Kobra’s head while running for the gas station in one of the first acid rains they had experienced in Zone 3. Kobra had long lines of pain etched onto his fingers, from shooting through the window on the same day. They still ached sometimes, rendering him unable to tinker, which made him at the same time in short bursts, the grumpiest and whiniest Killjoy to have haver walked this desert. They had learned the hard way that you couldn’t put water over it, the chemical reaction would only catalyse. You had to dry out the acid, shake out the drops, then wait for the pain to subside and for your skin to stop sizzling.

The further away from Battery City and its controlled climate you were, the more acid rains you would encounter, but the frequency also depended on the topology of the region; if you stayed near the mountains opposite to the sea, clouds would accumulate and become more and more acid, unleashing torrents of toxic water several times a week.

The radio crackled. Kobra and Poison exchanged a glance, then the redhead picked it up and fumbled with the tuner. 

_Look alive, sunshine._

It was Doctor Death Defying’s familiar drawl.

 _114 over our own little corner of paradise, you’re listening to Doctor Death Defying! Some good news for the fabulous ones, the flower has arrived with all its petals, but it still needs to be watered and given a bit of fertilizer before it can be composed into the bouquet. Soon the wedding will take its place, and the composition will be devastating! And now onto some music: they are loud, they are becoming the zones’ new darlings, here are Mad Gear and the Missile Kid with Mastas of Ravenkroft!_

Poison turner down the volume as angry guitars and drums began to sound trough the speakers.

“He wants us to go to him”, Kobra said.

“Yup, seems like the prophecy stuff is finally happening.”

*

Ghoul had a terrible taste in his mouth and the feeling he hadn’t slept in about three years. His right shoulder hurt like a minor train tunnel had been pierced without his consent. His head was pounding like a degenerated rave party, and even his leg was sending jolts of pain, trying to participate in the suffering fest that was taking place in his head. Not even his scalp was exempt; a tuft of his long black hair was stuck somewhere and was adding still a bit more pressure. All in all, he classified this awakening just after the great hangover of the winter races, where he had drunk the alcoholic first prize in only one night, done a bunch of fun stuff he didn’t even remember, and lived to regret his life choices.

He forced his eyelids to open, and was immediately met with the red, black and white of a Drac mask. What was creepy about them was the childishness of the design. The red mouth, the black marble-like eyes, the immaculate pale face in contrast with the dark hair; it looked like an exorcized nightmare done in the middle of the night. It felt like looking behind your back and trying not to sob in case _it_ heard you. Their costumes would have found their places on pantomimes, artificially animated objects that didn’t even deserve the status of creature. Their gestures were stiff and sudden, like corpses reanimated not immediately after their death, but left to wait for a few hours. Ghoul repressed a shudder and tried to appear drowsy. Thanks to the ruthlessness of the firefight, and the fact that Bat City was a cheap fuck, Korse had wanted to take back as many cars as possible. As a result, there was only one Drac with him in the back, and the exterminator himself was driving. _Bad decision, motherfucker_ , the Killjoy thought. There was still the matter that his hands were tied behind his back, painfully pulling his shoulder back. His left leg was firing white spasms up to his brain every now and then, which was pretty handicapping, but had had the happy consequence that they hadn’t bothered to tie his feet together.

Quickly taking a look at his bearings, Ghoul realised he was half lying, half sitting down. His head was leaning against the car door (which explained the hair pulling), his back was (uncomfortably) resting on the seat, and his lower half was slowly slipping down into the footrest. The slipping was happening because he was lying over something very slick, which he realised was his own blood. Through the hole in his jeans, Ghoul could see the wound in his thigh, still sluggishly bleeding, keeping the red that had seeped over his whole pant leg fresh. Even his boot was coated in the substance, sickly shining in the light of the afternoon sun.

Making his decision in a split second, Ghoul straightened up and, in one movement, struck the Drac straight in the chest with his feet while twisting his wrists, blindly searching for the car handle. He found it behind his shoulder blade, not locked. The Killjoy used the momentum gained from kicking the Drac to fall back towards the warm sand, rolling a few times before he stopped. The car brakes screeched, but it was already a few dozens meters away. No other car was visible.

Ghoul got up despite the terrible pain in his thigh and shoulder (none of his previous action had improved their state), and began to wobble towards the sun, hoping its glaring blaze would hide him at least a bit until he could reach cover. He made it two strides before realising his mistake. If lying down and kicking the Drac had hurt his leg, it had been nothing in comparison to trying to put his weight on it. He tumbled to the ground and couldn’t even catch himself, since his hands were still tied behind his back. 

He scrambled to his knees, mouth full of sand and eyes scratchy. He was taking a stand when a heavy weight settled on his shoulders, making him cry out in pain. He fell forward again, this time catching a rock with his face, which had the added bonus of making his nose bleed. He trashed and trashed, but the Drac on his back, full of sand and determination, was too much for him without his hands. Ghoul managed to headbutt him, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on the sinister puppet. One white gloved hand clamped over his wrists while the other pressed into his wounded shoulder, making him howl in pain. The hand changed his grip, and the side of his head was slammed into the rock one time, two times, making him see the stars he knew were very, very far away.

At last, the assault ceased, and the Drac lifted his wrists up, making Ghoul follow the movement if he didn’t want to dislocate his own shoulders. He climbed to his feet in a haze of white light, not seeing anything. He didn’t see the car coming back, but he distinctly heard the car door closing; His vision came back enough to see Korse approaching, seething with rage.

“Tie his legs”, the exterminator said, gripping Ghoul by his bad shoulder again. This was getting old very fast. Ghoul glared up to his face, trying to show as much hate as he could without opening his mouth. He was afraid only a cry of pain would come out. Korse’s white face wasn’t even a little bit sweaty. The exterminator smirked. “We don’t want him getting away again, do we?” Saying that, he kneed Ghoul into the stomach, adding another bright flare into the map of pains the Killjoy was currently sporting.

He felt the Drac hands against his ankles, tying something around them, tightening it brusquely, sending another jolt of pain to his thigh. “And take care of his leg too, I don’t want him to bleed out before we get there.” Ghoul didn’t even register the pain, his vision just flashed white and the next thing he knew, he was half collapsed over Korse, his forehead on his shoulder, trying to get his breathing back. The exterminator had a hand against the nape of his neck in an oddly comforting gesture. Ghoul snarled while getting back. His face had left a bloodied imprint on Korse immaculate white jacket.

The Killjoy was then manhandled back into the car, flat on his stomach this time, his feet towards the door and his face pressed on the seat. Korse got back into the driver seat and started the engine. It seemed seconds to Ghoul, but it was probably a lot more, when he felt the pain had receded enough that he could speak without humiliating himself.

“You fucking fuckers”, he slurred” I’m gonna fuck you over so fucking fast you won’t know what fucking hit you.”

“I’m very impressed”, Korse said. “Is that the kind of language they teach you in the Zones?”

“At least I still have a personality, motherfu—“ Ghoul’s retort was interrupted by the Drac pushing a piece of cloth in his mouth, then putting some duct tape over it. The Killjoy spluttered for a second, his nose full of blood refusing to let enough air pass. He finally sneezed, and a blood clot got out and landed on the white pant leg of the Drac. The white puppet took the opportunity to knock him behind the ear with his ray gun. Fun Ghoul was out like a light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the response to the first chapter. <3
> 
> Also, I made a tumblr : howtheygotitall.tumblr.com
> 
> Like the last time, I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up, but it'll be before a whole month has passed.
> 
> Keep the faith Xx


	3. Chapter 2 : Skies and ceilings

Kobra Kid sighed. “That’s all we need right now. We lost Ghoul, Jet’s hurt, and now Dr. D. wants us to go on some fantasy prophecy quest?” He looked at Poison for approval, but the redhead wasn’t agreeing, shaking slightly his head. He raised his eyes from Jet’s prone form, looking at Kobra through dirty hair strands.

“I don’t know, Kobra. Last time he talked about it, he seemed pretty serious.”

The last time Doctor Death Defying had talked about the prophecy had, in fact, been the only time. That had been six months before, give or take a few weeks. The Fabulous Four had been summoned by Dr. D. in between their regular meetings. Poison was having one of his silent days, so it was Kobra that had led the party towards the radio shack and made small talk with Show Pony, Dr. D’s usual messenger.

The radio pirate usually just gave them pointers on which rebel settlements would need help in the next few weeks, where the new supplies routes were passing through, and in which zones the Draculoid patrols were increasing, planning for them where to go and coordinating with other nomad rebel crews. But that time, he had been all secretive and mysterious. He had waited for Show Pony to waltz back outside, ever the elegant desert skater, then had beckoned the Four closer, obviously not wanting to have to raise his voice above a mere whisper.

“There have been rumours”, he had said. “Rumours of a future that we could have, of a freedom we could get, a battle we could win. It’s been said, and heard, that these gifts will come in the form of a child. A child that must be protected, must be raised, loved, nurtured, until they are old enough to wield the power their birth will have granted them.”

Kobra had cringed internally. “You have smoked some good shit lately, haven’t you?” He had asked. “Mysterious prophecy helps rebels defeat evil corporation? That sounds like one of those crazy headlines from the old Florida.”

Dr. D. had looked insulted. “This comes directly from the Phoenix Witch, you know. This is what we’ve been waiting for. A chance to defeat BLI.”

“Come on, D! The Phoenix Witch is a religious figure! To reassure rebels that they’re not alone in the big dark desert, and that even if they die from Dracs’ blasts, they won’t just disappear forever! And that’s fine.” He had suddenly realised he was getting carried away. “That’s fine if that’s what they need, but you can’t give them false hope that some miraculous saviour will come to our aid, that’s not helpful, that’s just cruel.” He had stopped talking, embarrassed by the shaking of his voice; preferring to worry his lips between his teeth.

“What do you need us to do?”

Kobra had been surprised that Poison had even spoken. He had been having more and more silent days as time had passed since their escape from the city. He would go to bed at night, looking and talking just as usual, and in the morning he would not open his mouth, not say a single word of his own volition. At first, Kobra had asked him what was wrong, but answering him seemed to make Poison suffer even more than just staying inside his own head, so Kobra had stopped. He would just try to joke crazier, to mock BLI harder, hoping to bring his brother back to himself. Sometimes it only took a few hours; Poison would gradually open up, smile a bit then go back as normal; sometimes he would go back to bed not having said a single word in the whole day. The increase in frequency of these days was getting Kobra more and more worried as time grew, even if he tried not to show it. But this sudden enthusiasm seemed good; this seemed to get his brother out of his shell, and he had to encourage that last development. He would deal about the inevitable disappointment later.

Kobra had looked at Jet and Ghoul, raising his eyebrows towards his brother. He didn’t want them to interrupt this moment. Ghoul had wrung his hands, obviously torn; Jet had nodded very subtly. They, too, had noticed the sudden glow in Poison’s eyes.

Doctor Death had slowly rolled his wheelchair back, seeming more at ease with the redhead’s enthusiasm. “Some time in the future, I will need your help. Whatever you are doing at that time, I will need you to drop everything, to forget about your own priorities, and do what I will tell you.”

“Whatever you need”, Poison had said, leaning forward.

Kobra had given an unconvinced assent while the others nodded darkly.

At the next meeting, the pirate hadn’t talked about the prophecy anymore; he had just conducted business as usual. But for a few weeks, Poison had seemed taken with a second breath; his eyes glowed; his voice shook with passion; he talked about art with a renewed passion.

Then, as time passed and as Dr. D. didn’t give them any news, Poison had returned to his previous state; occasionally chipper, usually dreamy, sometimes perfectly silent. Kobra had tried bringing the prophecy matter in conversations, but Poison seemed to have lost any faith he ever had, even less convinced than Kobra had been at Dr. D’s shack. He had gone back at trying to find ways to politically undermine BLI, without ever settling on a plan. Kobra had finally settled on hoping the prophecy would never be talked about again, to not see Poison through hope and despair so brutally ever again.

And here it was, the dreaded call; the one Kobra had prayed in a Witch he didn’t believe in for it not to come. He could now decide to place all his hope in the child, or stay skeptical and be prepared to pick up the pieces of Poison when the hope would inevitably be disappointed.

A grunt from his lap took Kobra out of his thoughts. On his lap, Jet’s healthy eye was blinking, his eyebrow frowning.

“Jet”, Kobra said. “How do you feel ?”

Jet Star seemed to concentrate to consider his answer. He opened his mouth but closed it again, taking in his surroundings, and the fact that he was currently half laying on Kobra’s legs. “Why am I on the ground?” He sounded, at the same time, exhausted, hurt, and weirdly enough, terribly jaded.

Kobra chuckled nervously. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“You and I were cooking, and then —“ His eye popped, suddenly terrified. “Korse came in here! Is everyone okay? How’s Ghoul?”

Kobra closed his eyes for a brief instant. Of course, Ghoul would be Jet’s first worry, not himself. He considered lying him to him for a second, but Poison didn’t give him the opportunity of doing such. He leaned into Jet’s reduced line of vision, his face contorted in what he obviously thought was a reassuring expression.

“He was taken, Jet, he’s not dead. Not yet, at least.” He took a breath. “You got shot too; in the side of your head. How do you feel? Can you move your legs?”

Jet Star seemed, at last, to take stock of his state. He raised a hand to his head, which Kobra took before he could mess up his bandaged eye. “Don’t touch that”, he said. “Poison just bandaged it.” Jet scrunched his eyebrows, in obvious pain. His feet twitched; as a reaction, the veins in his neck stood out suddenly. “I can feel my feet”, he grunted, “now tell me what’s happening.”

Poison forced him to go through a list of body parts to move and feel pinches in before answering him. Jet Star seemed mostly okay, apart from his eye. “I don’t know if it’s going to get better, Jet”, Poison confessed. “We’ll have to wait and see.” He then gave him the gist of what had happened while Jet was sitting up with Kobra’s help.

“Then Dr. D. called about the prophecy stuff”, Kobra said. “He wants us to go to him to get further instructions, I guess. But we can’t do that without Ghoul!”

“We’ll have to”, Jet said. “We need supplies to get in the city. Informations on where he could be detained, a vehicle to get out if he’s hurt. We can’t go in guns blazing, we’ll just get ghosted. I say we first go to D., tell him what’s happening. This prophecy stuff waited for six months, it probably can wait a few more days.” With that, he began to look through the pack Kobra had made for him, grumbling about forgotten hair ties. He limped into the other room, leaving the brothers alone.

Kobra stayed sitting in the same place. He didn’t know how they could go to Battery City on foot, a bit more than a hundred miles from here, and get out with Ghoul without any help or resources. Yet he was torn. It felt wrong, not immediately going after one of their own.

“This is fucked up”, Kobra muttered. “Korse hates us. He’s gonna go hard on Ghoul, and that’s our fault, be we can’t help him right now because we’ve got to help Dr. D. That’s fucked up.” He couldn’t stop saying it. “All this is fucked up. I wish we didn’t behave like fucking kids. If he gets hurt, it’s on us, Poison. Not him, not Jet, _us_."

He couldn’t help but think about all the times before, when it had been just him and Poison, mocking Korse when he arrived too late to catch them. The exterminator had seemed to take their defection to Battery City as a personal offense. A few times, he had arrived late on a scene, where they had been stealing supplies from Drac patrols. The white soldiers would call for reinforcement, and the Exterminator would arrive guns blazing, with a new contingent, his face contorted in his fury, rage in all his features. It had seemed fun then, mocking him, giving him the finger or a military while shouting insanities when they escaped him at the last second, gunning the engine and shooting the Drac drivers. It just seemed stupid now, childish. 

“This is the best thing we can do, Kobra”, Poison said. “Helping Dr. D. will help us get the back up we need to get Ghoul out. And by making BLI fall, we make sure that nothing like this will ever happen again. I don’t like this anymore than you do, but we can’t just mope over our past errors; we need to act now.”

Kobra sighed. This was it; faithful, believing Poison was back and would lead them towards success. He only needed to put his trust back into his big brother. Kobra pushed the guilt back inside of him, down his throat, deep into his gut, where it still hurt but couldn’t paralyse him anymore.

“Okay, where do we need to go ?”

“He called the desert ‘little corner of paradise’”, Poison said, fiddling with the portable radio. “That means an even zone number. What did he say… ‘This is Dr. Death Defying’, so zone 2. And Mastas begins with drums, so first quadrant, North-East.”

“What’s in there again?” If learning the code had been fine by Kobra, he never remembered what the designated landmark looked like in each of the secret locations.

“It’s that rock that officially looks like rabbit ears but also like two giant dicks”, Poison chuckled.

“Oh right, Pony always rides the ears when we get there. I wonder what that tells us about him.” Kobra quickly calculated the distance between them and the rendez-vous point. It was situated west of them, in the direction of Battery City. “Not too far away from here then, we should get there by morning.”

With that, Jet burst back into the room, a dozen hair ties on each wrist. “I’m ready, we can go now. Have you figure out where we need to go?”

“Rabbit dicks”, Kobra answered while getting up.

“Let’s go then.”

They went out. While they were caring for Jet and talking, the sun had begun to set. It was still pretty hot, but you could at least walk twenty meters without feeling like you were transforming into a puddle. The warmth of the day would gradually dissipate as the sun went down, and when it would be fully dark, the desert night would be one of the coldest Kobra had the privilege to know. Desert was unforgiving like that, but it still gave you small gifts, like walking in giant sand landscape, towards the sun, the horizon everywhere around you. The whole gradient of colours was visible, from dark blue to violet to red to pink to a yellowy white. The few cacti interrupting the sky were a witness that everything didn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. 

It would have painted a pretty picture, Kobra thought, if their situation hadn’t been so dire.

  
*

Ghoul woke up in a lot of pain, which was getting pretty old pretty fast. His leg throbbed rhythmically with his shoulder, and his nose was entirely clogged with blood, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. He was lying in the back corner of a small grey and weirdly odourless room. It seemed pretty new at first glance, but since he was directly lying on the ground, Ghoul could see that the linoleum, a few centimeters from his nose, bore quite a few scuff marks, what seemed to be some scratches, and a few dark traces that had resisted cleaning. He put the information in the not reassuring part of his brain, then tried to concentrate on the rest of the room. It was approximately one hundred square feet, rectangular, and the ceiling was at that characteristic height that made it just this side of oppressive. The far side had a toilet without its lid, metallic grey, in one piece. No weapon to be gained there.

Fun Ghoul was lying down in a smaller zone that had been designated as cot by being lowered compared to the rest. He pressed one hand on it, one hand on the scuffed linoleum; there was no difference in the hardness of the material. Very BLI-like, then: telling you where to lie down but without any advantage in obeying.

The floor was slightly warm, making the room agreeable without it being too stuffy. The walls were a uniform grey, exactly the same tone as the ground and the ceiling. Ghoul looked down at himself, suddenly afraid he would be all grey like the rest of the room, that his tattoos would be lifeless and foreign on his own skin. But no, the short sleeves of the white t-shirt he was wearing let him see they were as usual, bright and colourful, reassuring him with a sense of normality, a sense that his self was still the same. His thigh had been bandaged, he could see the outline through the thin fabric of grey sweatpants. Raising a hand to his shoulder, he found it bandaged too. He didn’t dare look at it, afraid to somehow contaminate the wound. His clothes had been changed, but he was still dusty from the desert sand and dirty from his own sweat. Apparently, BLI hospitality extended to standardizing your clothes but not cleaning you up (which he was grateful for).

Looking back at his surroundings, he noticed the door, which was (not surprisingly) exactly the same colour as the rest of the room. Trying to get up was, as Ghoul quickly realised, a bad idea, but since when did he take any notice from what his body was telling him? He gritted his teeth trough the pain from his thigh, and approached the door. It didn’t have any handle and no apparent lock. There weren’t even any hinges, which meant it probably opened towards the outside. Harder to maintain open to escape from the inside, then. If it even opened by swinging; tapping the wall beside it, Ghoul checked its thickness. The muffled sound he got told him that the walls where thick enough that the door could simply slide into it. Ghoul then stuck his ear to the door, then to the wall next to it; either everyone on the other side was very silent, or the soundproofing was impeccable: he could only hear his own breathing and heart beat. Closing his eyes with a sigh, limping towards the back of the room, he had to admit that this was prison architecture at its finest.

Discouraged, he faced the cot again and noticed another little square in the wall, at about chest height. He approached it a bit more, not fancying giving possible security camera monitors a close-up of his nostrils. It was, in fact, just a piece of plastic, same texture and colour as the rest of the wall. There was just a small notch on the underside. He put his index in it and slid the lid up. There was a steel ring welded into what seemed to be a metal post hidden into the concrete wall. He jerked back, suddenly feeling very cold. The lid slid back into place, hiding the ring back. Shaking his head, he sat back on the cot, resting his hurt leg in front of him.

Ghoul tried not to think too much about the steel ring and its possible uses, nor the scuff marks, or the badly cleaned traces of what was obviously blood. He settled for reassembling his scrambled, sparse memories. He remembered looking at Poison near the ceiling, proud of finishing his art piece. He remembered the burst of violence, the sudden searing pain, the fall to the ground. He had been knocked out very briefly; he had seen his friends fight valiantly, Jet get shot in the head, Dracs fall, Korse come in the room. Then his memories got very hazy. The pain had been terrible, but it was the shock of it all that had made him faint again.

He tried to think logically. The guns had obviously not been set on the lethal setting, but still strong enough to make bleed and cauterize wounds at the same time. If Jet had survived, he probably wasn’t in a good state. Would Kobra and Poison come get him with Jet in that hypothetic bad state?

Ghoul shook his head. Trying to guess what he didn’t have any way of knowing was just sterile worry. He just had to wait it out; either the others would come get him, or something would happen, but he couldn’t do anything on his own, and working himself up wouldn’t help him in the long run.

Two hours later, Fun Ghoul had to admit he was bored out of his mind. After feeling nervous for half an hour, expecting the door to burst open at any time, adrenaline had slowly ebbed back, leaving him slightly cold. He quickly recognised if he didn’t occupy his mind in some sense, he was going to go crazy from the inaction. He tried to remember all the lyrics from Carly Rae Jepsen’s _Call Me Maybe_ , but got stuck on the second verse, after the line that went “I beg and borrow and steal”.

He then air guitared to Angus’ part in _Thunderstruck_ , miming the fret over his lap since he couldn’t move his left arm, but stopped when he realised, the hard way, that he couldn’t jump everywhere without his thigh hurting like hell. Sitting with only one hand in the correct position, air guitar didn’t look like air guitar at all. He let himself fall back (delicately, mind his shoulder) back on the cot. He then settled on trying to work out why his last upgrade on his ray gun didn’t work (anything that kept him from looking at the small lid and hidden ring in the wall). He was trying to include an automatic burst mode but only ever got two shots out before the system stopped, no matter how many he tried to program. Also, the electronic piece he was using for his tests was currently a bit bigger than the size of his palm, which was neither very easy to put into his holster when not in use, nor practical to use.

After a few hours of silent musings, having finally identified the problem and memorised the fix he had designed, Ghoul got up to use the toilet. When he finished, he vaguely looked for a sink in which to wash his hands, then sighed while rolling his eyes. Having lived in the desert for more than a year, he was used to ignore basic hygiene a lot, but being back in a situation with real toilets, he quickly found out habits were hard to shake.

Feeling a little tired, he lay down again on his cot, grumbling about the quality of the material, and tried to close his eyes. Unless chemicals had been used, by the dryness of his throat, it should only have been midnight of the same day. However, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t sleep. He usually couldn’t fall asleep on command, but as he was feeling exhausted, he had hoped his body would give him some reprieve. That didn’t seem to be the case.

It was stupid, but what bothered him the most wasn’t the pain from his shoulder and thigh (though still, he would’ve preferred without, thank you very much), nor the thirst or hunger (living in the desert, he was used to both, and he would wait to be a bit more desperate before drinking the toilet water), it was the way his hands were so dry. He hated more than anything the sensation it provided. His skin felt too small on his fingers, on the back of his hands. Touching his fingers to the palms of his hands gave him shivers, like a chalk screeching on a black board. In the desert, his hands would usually be greasy enough that he didn’t feel so strongly this foreign stiffness.

Suddenly, the pressure in the room changed. A long time had passed; Ghoul was pretty sure it was morning. The change was very subtle, it was only because he had been so attuned to his environment that he felt it, and understood in a flash of clarity what had happened ; the door had been opened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it took a bit longer than I thought to write this; I'm at my parents so I have less time to write than usual.  
> Anyway, next chapter will be up before a month has passed. :)  
> Yes, I hate the formating of "chapter i : chapter i-1 : title of chapter", but I looked up how to make it prettier and... laziness ensued.  
> (Reviews give me a fuckton of motivation btw ^^)
> 
> \+ you can come yell at howtheygotitall.tumblr.com and look at lists of songs, a lot of which don't have any link to this fic other than me writing while listening to them


	4. Chapter 3: Without dawn

The cold slowly descended from the skies as the sun sunk beneath the horizon. A few hours after dark, only the sand seemed to have a bit of warmth left; Jet Star could feel it emanating, rising from his weary feet to his throbbing head. He could imagine the temperature as a colour; from the warm yellow on the ground to the dark blue around the rising moon to the deep black towards which he was walking.

He had needed Poison and Kobra’s help until a bit after sundown, walking between them like a giant radioactive spider. After a few hours though, the brothers looked just as tired as he felt, and he had taken upon himself to convince them he could walk on his own. He had found out the hard way that faking it did help him make it and had been relieved to finally let them walk without hindering them.

Only the fact that they were walking towards darkness was motivating. It felt like quitting light and stumbling into the shadows, it felt like rebelling and leaving Battery City all over again. Leaving his life behind him, al he had ever known for twenty odd years, had been hard, just like it was now, but Jet would never regret his decision.

Jet stumbled on a rock, lost his balance and regained it with the help of Kobra’s hand gripping his left bicep. He gave him a thankful smile, swearing under his breath. It felt like all the rocks in the entire desert had suddenly decided to be strategically badly placed in front of him, tonight. Even when seeing them, since only one of his eyes was functional, the perspective felt all wrong and he ended up misjudging more often than not the size of the step he had to take to avoid them. He stumbled time after time, his toes sore even through his reinforced boots; the shock would rise up his calf, then his thigh, up and up to his hip bone, adding yet another dreg of pain to his already full jug.

He had already realised that at least one-fifth of his field of vision had been eaten away by this damned blast; he couldn’t see anything in the periphery of his right side; anything past his nose strained his left eye, but the worst was this loss of perspective. All his adult life, Jet had prided himself on his accuracy when shooting, gained from hours of training and a carefully honed instinct. Since he used to close his right eye, his aiming probably wouldn’t change much; but knowing the distance from the shooter to the target was crucial. The ray guns shot highly concentrated lasers, which, according to Kobra, were basically condensed light. It meant that the blast was dispersed by the wind, decreasing the strength of the hit. Secondly (Kobra had tried explaining the details to him, but even he didn’t seem sure; between the garbled words, the perplexed silences and the half coherent sentences, Jet hadn’t understood a whole lot); yet, he had gotten the gist of it; and the gist was that gravity attracted light at two times the rate of a normal object. So, knowing the distance from your target was as important as knowing how to work the trigger, to compensate for the ray falling towards the ground. Jet shook his head, cringing at the flash of pain the action elicited. He couldn’t afford to mope on the subject.

Gritting his teeth, he looked at Kobra. The blonde walked unevenly. He was carrying Fun Ghoul’s backpack in addition to his own, and the unequal repartition of the weight on his back was giving him an uneven gait. Still, he walked on without complaining. A bit further was Poison, walking numbly with his lax face looking down numbly at his feet. His hands were clamped over the straps of his backpack, like losing it would mean the end of the world. He hadn’t uttered a single word since they had left the gas station, as if his sudden outburst of faith had sucked all life out from him.

Jet sighed and walked on.

Finally, they arrived at the place they had decided on to settle for the darkest hours of the night. At first sight, it just looked like a decrepit letterbox planted in an otherwise unassuming patch of sand.

Yet, in the sky around the box, the stars seemed muted. As if, out of some form of respect, they didn’t want to appear too bright in fear of outshining it. The box itself stood slightly askew, its colourful design raising a stark contrast against the bleakness of the night. Its sides were covered in sheets of paper, in keepsakes and trinkets, painted with words talking about forgiveness and pardon. Corners of the drawings had come unstuck under the light wind, shivering and casting shadows on their crude colours. Jet could make out a stick-figure Drac lying in what seemed to be a pool of its own blood, surrounded by a happy family of five. There was a cloth butterfly, washed out of its colours by the sun, a pin cruelly stuck in each of its wings tacking it to the metal. Its bead eyes reminded Jet of Draculoids; bright but lifeless.

Letterboxes such as this one were scattered across the desert, immobile witnesses to the sorrows of having to kill to survive. Some rebels thought that the Phoenix Witch watched over these boxes. You had to put the name of someone you killed, along with two gifts: your forgiveness, and something dear to you, that you would pay as a sign of goodwill. The payback was that she would watch over them. Not knowing the name wasn’t a hindrance; you could just tell about what had happened, identify them in some way, and she would help them get out of the desert, go towards the afterlife, or whatever you believed in. 

In the beginning, when he had just escaped Battery City, Jet had tried to follow the custom. But after repeating litanies upon litanies of ‘I forgive you’ while his guts still burned with hatred, he had stopped. No point in giving meaningless blessings to corpses if you weren’t even able to convince yourself.

The custom made the letterbox a sacred place. Everything you did under the shadow of the box, was seen by the Witch, even more than in every other place in the desert. Even if not all rebels believed in the existence of the Phoenix Witch, the majority of them did, which meant that you were much less likely to get attacked while camping under a letterbox. Effectively, it made them into sort of haunted truce places, and thus, perfect camping spots, even without a setting a watch.

Jet sat down in the sand, not even minding the dust getting in the back of his trousers. He set to get his blanket out of his backpack, too tired to even think about eating. He wrapped the dusty but well-cared-for patchwork against his frame, his eyes stroking the familiar patterns. He and Poison had used entire sewing thread spools to embroider and decorate their four respective blankets. His bore patterns of the stars, racing cars, cactuses and in one place where he usually put his head because it was the cleanliest, a picture of their four right hands side by side. Jet liked to tell he was very drunk when he had begun embroidering it to stave off the embarrassment, but the truth was that he felt a little safer every time he closed his eyes on the design.

Jet took care to put his head away from the four hands, not wanting to bleed through his bandage and ruin the spot. Tonight was not the night to feel artificially safe. He kept his eyes open though, looking at the brothers.

Poison had deposited his backpack at his feet and was currently sitting down against the box, looking vacantly into the distance. Kobra approached him and took off his own backpack, which he put alongside Poison’s. He extracted their blankets slowly, telegraphing his moves to Poison who didn’t seem totally present. He then carefully bundled them together, raising his arm around his brother’s back and laid his head on his shoulder, talking so quietly Jet couldn’t understand a word. Poison didn’t answer, but Jet saw one corner of his mouth rising in a toned-down version of his usual smirk.

Sleep eluded Jet Star for a long time after he tried to close his eyes.

Usually, by this time of the night, either Kobra or Poison would have had to ask Fun Ghoul to tone down his explosions because they couldn’t hold a civilised conversation under the constant noise, much less find sleep. Such a level of noise was always tiring, sometimes unnerving, but most of the time endearing when you could hear Ghoul laughing maniacally in the background. Jet couldn’t remember the number of times he had heard a terrible explosion, then Ghoul saying something along the lines of “oh, so that’s what it does”. His grin when coming back from one of his explosion-laden desert wanderings was at the same time worrying and absolutely hilarious. He always wore protection glasses, and when he came back he put them on his forehead, which let just two pale traces around his eyes in an otherwise soot-covered face.

Ghoul usually responded to their teasing by saying that, even if he had the formal training and skills of an electrical engineer, he was still a chemist at heart, and that a chemist needed his experiments to refine his art, thank you very much.

Jet couldn’t complain; his art, as Fun Ghoul called it, his propensity to destruct by various types of explosions dracs, vehicles and everything that didn’t look right, as the others called it, had saved them multiple times. As such, they were all ready to accept the… quirks that came with the art if they could happen strictly during waking hours.

Slowly, his thoughts about his missing friend morphed into something else. Flashes of white passed in front of him. Red and black interspersed as if trying not to be forgotten. Suddenly, all movement stopped, and a white cloth fell over him, like a veil. Through its thin threading, Jet could see that he was in a part of the desert in didn’t recognise. There were cacti all over the place, and Jet briefly thought about trying to make jam out of their juice. Raising his hands to his shoulders, he tried to get the cloth away from his face, but they passed right through it, even though he could feel the fine cloth on his nose and forehead. He shook his head, and the cloth fell away, draping itself around his feet, loving itself like a snake or a slowly purring cat.

There was laughter coming from behind the largest cactus. Jet approached it, then he realised it wasn’t only one cactus; there were at least a dozen, planted so close to each other that they seemed like one. Behind the cluster, he found Ghoul, leaning on the cactus, laughing his heart out. Spikes were piercing his skin, going through his arms, shoulders and chest. Jet approached, trying to get Fun Ghoul's attention to get him away from the cactus, but he didn’t seem to be able to hear him. The spikes were still growing out of the cactus, seeming to drink Ghoul’s blood, becoming bigger and bigger as he grew paler from blood loss.

Jet couldn’t take it anymore and tried to pry Ghoul away from the cactus, but the Killjoy screamed bloody murder as the spikes didn't want to let him go. Jet let go, full of dread. Kobra and Poison rose out of nowhere and pushed Jet away, pressing Ghoul back onto the spikes. Jet found himself stumbling towards the cactus, trying to avoid the spikes, but as his hands collided with the first one, the whole scenery changed abruptly and he found himself stumbling again, but with nothing in front of him this time.

He was standing on some BLI-type white tile, clean and smooth. His boots squeaked on it, leaving dust traces where he put his feet. A few meters away from him were some sort of display shelves, full of objects too small to identify from where he was. He approached cautiously, noting the absence of his ray gun from his shoulder holster. Seeing what stood on the shelves, he took a step back, confused. There was a small cardboard sign indicating the thirteen century, and beside it, what seemed to be some primitive glasses, made out of wood and leather. The dates were approaching today’s, each time displaying a newer form of glasses. Next to the racks of glasses, there was a sort of big overhead projector with a plastic face placed in the visor.

Finally, on the last rack were only two objects. One was a small metallic ball with a long thread getting away from it. The other was organic, white with red angry veins. Jet tilted his head, trying to get a better view, and found himself looking at his own right eye.

A sudden terrible pain spiked from his right orbit, and in an instant, Jet understood that reality had caught up to his dream and he had lost his eye all over again. He fell to the ground, his hands pressed on his head, screaming in pain and terror.

He woke up.

The first thought he had, weirdly enough, was about the extreme necessity of learning to prepare cactus jam. Still, in this half-asleep state that promised you that everything was possible, he figured he would just need to convince Kobra to help him test out different recipes. Pectin couldn’t be that hard to find, right?

Poison interrupted him from his thoughts.

“Wake up, Jetty-Jet, Pony must already be waiting for us.”

Indeed, if one side of the sky was still blue-black, the other one was a light pink, announcing the coming sunrise. A dark cut out beside the letterbox, Poison was stuffing his and Kobra’s blankets into their respective backpacks, while his brother was opening a can of PowerPup, his lips tight from disgust.

Jet got out from his blanket, rolled it and stowed it away before taking the offered spoon from Kobra, plunging it into the metallic can without enthusiasm. They usually ate dog food on the road because it was easy to eat, even cold, and didn’t make a mess. You just needed to get rid of the can once it was done, which they usually did by abandoning it on the side of the road.

When they were done, and Kobra had rinsed out the taste of PowerPup with a few mouthfuls of tepid water, they started walking again.

It took them only a few hours to reach the bunny-shaped rock, just as the sun was beginning to rise high above their head, sweltering them in its hot rays. 

Just like in Jet’s memory, an asphalt road passed behind the bunny ears, curving around the rock. As they reached the monument, the sound small wheels on rough tarmac made itself known. A second after that, a polka-dotted, tank top wearing, helmet sporting figure appeared, waving at them wildly.

  
*

  
A woman stood in the entrance. She entered swiftly, the door panel sliding back in after her. Deprived of colours as he was, Ghoul drank her in in a second. She was stocky with long legs, their shape enhanced by the form-fitting grey suit pants she was wearing. Of course, her jacket and shoes — sort of combat mary janes — matched the colour. She wore a badge with a series of letters and numbers that the Killjoy didn’t have time to read. Already, she was moving towards him, her face kind, her pale pink lips in a reassuring smile but her eyes a frightening void of emotion. Her high forehead was nicely framed by dark blonde hair streaked with a few grey strands. Apparently, when you dressed BLI long enough, even your body became BLI-standard.

Ghoul realised he was still lying down on the glorified cot. He sat up suddenly, and, ignoring the flash of pain got up. He staggered, his thigh screaming at him, but refused to sit back down, and settled for leaning on the wall, trying not to put any weight on his injured leg. Getting his breath back, he glared daggers at the woman, trying to project the confidence he didn’t feel.

She didn’t seem phased and stopped in the middle of the room, looking at him with a mix of pity and false kindness. Still, her eyes were empty.

“Hello, my name is Rosalin”, the woman began. She had a smooth voice, like a teacher or a radio animator would have. Ghoul cringed. Not the time to think about radio animators, even less about radio pirates. “I am here to help you. I know living in the desert felt like an adventure, and maybe it even felt thrilling at times, but now you need to come back to reality. The desert is a lie, promising you freedom and such nonsense, but only a stable life can help you achieve true happiness. A family, kids, a job, this is real life. You can’t always live in dreams, right?” Ghoul prepared a scathing retort, but it seemed she meant it as a rhetorical question because she instantly continued. “You can have a normal life again; you just need to tell me what your name is, and I will help you.”

Two things happened in Ghoul’s brain. First, how did she know he was city-born? Secondly, he briefly thought about his city name and cringed. Even when he had been brainwashed by BLI, he had hated it. It was fucking ridiculous; he could feel the blood pooling in his cheeks at the mere thought of it. He wet his lips with some difficulty, due to his dry tongue.

“My name’s Fun Ghoul.”

She had to already know that since his face, and Killjoy name, were plastered on over half the Battery City walls, with a mention “Wanted” and a whole lot of red on it.

“Oh, no honey, not these false names the rebels have wanted you to take. What I need is your real name, the name your parents gave you.” As she talked, she handed him a plastic bottle. He took it swiftly, then checked the cap. It hadn’t been opened, but obviously, BLI could have put any chemicals they wanted in it, since they manufactured the bottles themselves. He took a look at the toilet. Technically, he could drink its water, but firstly it was disgusting (even after living so long in the desert, Ghoul still had some expectations), and secondly, nothing told him that water wasn’t also drugged. Furthermore, they could drug him anytime and anyhow they wanted, so he didn’t have anything to lose by drinking the water. He cracked the seal open, his shoulder giving a twinge at the movement. Rosalin was watching him expectantly, and he wanted to be very clear.

“My name is Fun Ghoul.” His voice cracked on the last word. He brought the bottle to his lips, a very firm grip on himself to avoid spilling the water everywhere. He still had some dignity left, and wet t-shirts competitions had never clicked with him. The first drop on his tongue, in his throat, felt sweet, relieving the pastiness of his whole mouth in a second. He only took a mouthful though, swishing it around in his mouth to detect anything amiss. The water felt clean, or as he remembered clean water tasting like, at least.

Last time he had drunk such clean water had been his last day in the city. Ghoul would remember it his whole life. He had left the city not because of what they did to him, but because of what they were making him do to others. All in all, apart from his little ethics problems, he had been pretty happy. He had landed his dream job, engineering nanotechnology for the betterment of civilisation, and had done so with quite a lot of enthusiasm until BLI had wanted him to design the smallest emitter possible. In the requirements, it was the fact that it should be powered by using its environment: a soft duct full of a warm liquid with a flow varying in time, that had set him off.

It had only taken Ghoul a few days of snooping around to understand BLI wanted to create a tracker that could be implanted into people’s arteries without them ever noticing, to monitor their heartbeat, hormone flow and a fuckton of other stuff Ghoul didn’t know the first thing about. It had been the first time he was presented with a decision where his choice could have such an impact. He knew he was the best in his field; none of his colleagues would be able to pull this off as fast as him, not within at least a dozen months.

That night, he had looked at himself. His buzzed hair, the large thick-framed glasses that ate his whole face, his arched eyebrows, the tag that bore a name he hated, even his so-called “relaxed” attire, courtesy of his job, was a mould he didn’t want to forget himself in. These were all disagreements he had always been good at overlooking, never getting out of the rank, which meant he was on the lowest dose of BLI medication possible. He was a problemless citizen, and for the first time, he had felt ashamed of it.

“I need your name to help you.” Rosalin was still at it. She was looking at him earnestly, like she thought he would answer if she asked nicely enough. “I can get you more water if you want. Do you want some?” Ghoul suppressed the twinge of gratitude. This was a very basic manipulation technique. Yet, some more water couldn’t hurt.

“Yes”, he answered. He didn’t want to give her anything more.

She didn’t seem to get the memo. “I know you’ve been through some of the toughest things that can happen to people. Living in the desert is rough, and you have probably had your head filled with ideas like freedom and equality. But Battery City, and BL Industries, have only your best interests at heart. If you agree to rejoin us, we will be able to help you, and give you the life you deserve.”

“How many times do I have to fucking tell you?” Ghoul exploded. Since leaving the city, he wasn’t the best at dealing with anger, and hearing her spouting such blatant lies was grating on his nerves. Maybe because he could see his past self in her calm, happy blandness. “I’m not interested in your sanitised, emotionless life. Now if you’re not going to do anything useful, just fuck off and leave me alone.”

Rosalin looked perplexed, even a little hurt, which had to be genuine since she was such a bad actress. “I… I’ll be back tomorrow, then. In the meantime, someone will come to deliver your water.” The door slid open behind her, allowing her to leave. Ghoul flipped her off and lay down back on his glorified floor depression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is chapter 3. Song list should be up on tumblr (howtheygotitall.tumblr.com) quickly after this (also you can come shout at me).
> 
> Like usual, comment/kudos feed my cats and next chapter should be up before a month has passed.
> 
> Until then, avoid the plague and keep your loved ones safe <3


	5. Chapter 4: Turns and dead ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bargains are made, bad news are received.

Show Pony was wearing their usual uniform: polka-dotted tights, a white cropped tank top and pink roller skates. A large helmet was fixed atop their body, giving them the appearance of a tall, lean mushroom. Graceful as always, the messenger was skating towards them with precise and smooth moves, their shadow following suit.

The first time Poison had heard of Show Pony, it had been less than a week after leaving the City. It was only him and Kobra at the time; they wouldn’t meet Jet Star until a few weeks later. The brothers had been crashing in a small rebel settlement, having run out of water and food pretty fast. They had chosen to take as little as possible with them when sneaking out to remain discreet.

The brothers were eating some cactus compote while sitting in the corner of a decrepit little inn. It was the only kind of food that wasn’t completely dry and that they had been able to afford with the stack of credits they had taken from Battery City. Even so, the rest of the menu didn’t look appetizing; the cheapest item was something called “PowerPup can”, and the most expensive was natural carbonated water, imported from the other end of the world.

Kobra was worrying about finding a place to sleep safely (older people were eying them not too gently), but Poison had raised his hand, cutting him off. The group of rebels sitting behind him was talking about a radio pirate that seemed to be some sort of unofficial rallying person. They were talking about his messenger who seemed like a minor divinity if you believed everything they were saying about them. By the end of the evening, having left the least believable stuff out, Poison was convinced that this Show Pony was the Messiah of the desert. They wore roller skates with razor blades attached to the sides, which allowed them to glide through swarms of Dracucloids, downing a dozen a minute. They were an incredible strategist, never once missing the assigned objective, keeping their head cold even when suffering heavy losses. Last but not least, they had the seemingly magic capacity of never running out of fuel. Poison had thought longly about this last skill, coming up with various scenarios; either Show Pony was always perfectly prepared with carefully measured gas and planned routes, or they had secrets fuel stashes across the desert. Either way, it would be beneficial for the brothers to meet them. So they had searched for them, but the skater was elusive. The first time they had met them was actually when Fun Ghoul and Jet Star had already joined them, so a good six months later.

They had since learned that Pony could be considered a good strategist only if you didn’t care about getting out alive, or with all of your body parts intact. Their plans were usually Ghoul level of insanity, but on the sparkly side of chaos rather than the explosive one. Show Pony counted on everyone being as quick and nimble as them, which bordered on impossible when they had their skates on. The “never running out of fuel” part came from the fact that they didn’t need it; their skates were their preferred transport method, and you couldn’t drive a car or a motorbike with casters on your feet. The guy didn’t ever take them off, not even to sleep.

Approaching the three Killjoys with impressive speed, Poison could see that they hadn’t changed for a bit since the last time the Four had seen them. Their face was unreadable due to their helmet, but their body was never totally motionless.

One of the stripes of their white top was slightly displaced, letting a sliver of paler skin show. Poison vaguely wondered if Show Pony had several sets of the same outfit, or if, when they could wash their clothes with some carefully measured out water, they would walk around butt-naked and pale. He wondered what Doctor Death Defying thought of it, then shook his head. Thinking about people naked was usually bad practice when you had a purely business relation with them.

“Hey, guys what's up?” Show Pony asked, cocking their hip and leaning on the left dick of the Rabbit. They did a double-take. “Where’s Ghoul? He hasn’t exploded any part of himself, has he?” Their helmet finally turned towards Jet, tilting in puzzlement when he saw the bandage.  
Kobra opened his mouth but Poison beat him to it, surprising himself. Peril had its advantages in getting him out of his head, then.

“He’s been taken, Show”, Poison said, trying to convey the urgency of the situation through his voice. “Korse and a patrol of Dracs attacked us, they got him and took him back to what is probably Bat City. We need to talk to Doctor D. as soon as possible.”

Pony straightened themselves. “Follow me, then”, they said over their shoulder, already skating at the maximum speed the Killjoys would be able to follow on foot.

They tried jogging for a while, but Jet paled so much with every step that they settled for walking at the quickest pace possible. Show Pony guided them through the desert, checking invisible landmarks and discreet signs.

This was one of their only unexaggerated qualities; they could find their way in the desert like nobody. They had a fabulous memory for everything related to maps and had helped them out of a bad situation more times than they could count. Becoming lost in the desert was easy, even more when you were new. Nothing resembled more a cactus than another cactus, and let’s not talk about rocks. But every time the Four had been able to reach them by radio, describing the landscape to Show Pony had enabled them to pinpoint their location, from which the skater could then guide them back to a known landmark.

This time, Dr D.’s hiding place was a metal-walled shack placed in a hole in the ground. Around the hole were a few big rocks, helping to hide the tiny building. Their different shades of grey mixed with the reddish-green of the rusted metal like an impressionist painting. From afar, it seemed as life had colonised the place, a stark contrast with the rest of the landscape; sand, rocks, and more sand.

As soon as the shack was visible, Poison had to exert very strict control on himself to avoid bolting and running at full speed towards the door. First, he wouldn’t be able to run very long in the heat, and second, Dr D. didn’t like surprise intrusions. He usually made his unliking known with the help of his ray gun, which wouldn’t end well for either of them. Yet, as the small group walked the few hundred yards separating them from the hideout, Poison couldn’t help but imagine everything that could be happening to Ghoul right at the time. He didn’t know where this overactive imagination suddenly came from; it felt as if, seeing the shack, his brain suddenly went into overdrive. As if it wanted to compensate the hours of void from the night before.

Once they approached the shack, Poison could see that a big antenna adorned the top, its rusted base a contrast to its shiny bolts. Dr D. probably took his antenna with him when he moved.

Show Pony lead the Killjoys towards the door, opened it and motioned them inside the dark interior. Poison exchanged glances with Kobra who nodded, letting him go in first. Ever the big brother, Poison stepped in.

It took his eyes a few seconds to get used to the darkness. The first thing he noticed was the sheer prevalence of clutter everywhere in the room. On tables, workbenches, chairs, stools, on top of ancient-looking computers and even on the floor, there were screwdrivers, random papers covered in drawings and lists, half unsoldered motherboards, silverware (PowerPup covered, because that was everyone’s lot, even radio pirates’), batteries, random clothes (from the cut and colour, probably Show Pony’s), a surprisingly white tablecloth, a dozen rolls of what Kobra liked to call ‘kidnapping tape’, and a drying rack covered in solitary socks. Poison recoiled, feeling overwhelmed. Just all this stuff that lay there since what seemed to be the dawn of time, or at least, a few months, given the thickness of the layer of dust. 

On the far wall (which wasn’t very far at all, two yards at most, but was an ocean away in terms of the mess) there was a second door. The way to the door was occupied with Dr Death Defying, but Poison could only see part of his face. Despite his bandana, the rest of it was obscured by his long black hair, and sunglasses hid his eyes. Due to the poor lighting, but maybe also because of his apparent intense concentration, his eyebrows were frowning. When the four rebels came in, he raised his hand, signalling for them to stay silent. He threw a small orange ball, which then followed a whole course made up of pans, pots and spatulas. Each time it bounced back, it produced different sounds, forming a charmingly rhythmic melody. The ball came to a stop after seven rebounds. With exaggerated gestures, Doctor D. proceeded to carefully push a button, ending what seemed to be a very intense session. As soon as he stopped pressing, he whooped while turning towards them.

“I DID IT, PONY! The new jingle for the station is done, and I still have all these ping pong balls!”

At the same time, he threw Show Pony a bucket full of orange ping pong balls. The messenger caught it in extremis, setting it down amidst the clutter. The radio pirate finally took notice of the three Killjoys. His face changed expressions, settling on a serious one when he saw how distressed they seemed.

“Hi D.”, Poison said. “Listen, I know you sent us this message for the prophecy and stuff, but we have a situation here.”

He proceeded to explain the raid from the day before, how they didn’t notice the Draculoids creeping in, the silent arrival of Korse, the shoot out. His voice cracked when he got to the point of Ghoul getting shot. He paused, swallowed his saliva. The truth was that he and Kobra could have gone after them, but it would probably have cost Jet’s life and certainly theirs.

“And then you called on the radio, and we thought we could ask you for help, in the form of a car and maybe reinforcements if you can spare them”, he concluded. “So, will you?” A beat. “Help us, I mean.”

A second beat, followed by a third.

“Listen, Poison.”

Poison gritted his teeth. Such beginnings were rarely a good sign.

“I really want to help you”, Dr D. continued, looking everywhere but the Killjoys’ faces. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any resources to give you at the moment. Neither material nor favours from other rebels. I’ve been rallying everyone I can find, these last few months, to learn more about these rumours that I talked to you a few months back, and it’s cost me a lot, in terms of carbons and reputation.”

The worse of it was that he looked dejected at having to say the words. Poison wanted to hate him, wanted to rip him out of his wheelchair and hurt him, hurt him like he was hurting them. He looked at Kobra instead. His brother was slowly shaking his head, long strands of bleached blond hair falling in front of his closed lids. A second later, he looked at Poison too, his eyes so full of trust Poison felt his stomach knot on itself. Sometimes it scared Poison, how much trust Kobra put in him. He knew he wasn’t a hero, he just didn’t know how to stop behaving like one.

“But if you help me, that’ll give me enough leverage to give you some stuff you’ll need to get Ghoul back.”

Poison did a double-take. He dared not hope. Dr D pinched his nose between to fingers, his face tight.

“The subject of the prophecy has been localised. It’s a little girl, in a village in Zone 4.” He didn’t have time to go further than that.

“We need the car and reinforcements _now_ ”, Kobra said, intervening for the first time, his voice shaking a bit. “Jet got hurt, and who knows what’s happening to Ghoul right now. I’m sorry, but I don’t care so much about your fucking better future or whatever. If I’m honest, your prophecy sounds just like BLI sounded before it took over. And I’d prefer to get Ghoul back now than to get a hypothetic future help for the desert. You said it yourself back then, the girl needs to grow up and whatever before she can do anything useful. We’ll take care of her later, right now Ghoul should be the priority.”

Dr Death took a long breath.

“What I’m _trying_ to say, Kobra”, he said, emphasizing exasperatedly his words, is that the village the Girl is in is currently surrounded by Draculoids. Their attention got caught by someone going by the name of Tommy Chow Mein, he’s sort of a black market seller. If the Dracs get in and find out that the Girl is there, they’re going to kill her and everyone that stands between them. Can your conscience abide by that? Listen, I’m sorry about Ghoul, but he’ll have to fend off for himself for a few days more. If you succeed in getting in and save the Girl, helping Chow Mein at the same time, he’ll give you anything you ask. There’s a car parked not too far from here, a car that’s faster than any other car you could get your hands on in this desert. It’s your ticket to get Ghoul back and get out of Battery City alive. Unless you don’t care about alive, and all you want is for Ghoul to not die alone.”

Poison blinked. His best friend’s life was resting on their ability to help a black market reseller, people notoriously known for caring only about carbons? Even if getting this Tommy Chow Mein out went well, his possible lack of honour could very well damn them, and Ghoul with it. Poison turned towards Jet Star, trusting his advice above all else; the Killjoy was usually the most level-headed of the Four, weighing every pro and con before reaching the best decision. His hope was short-lived: during the conversation, Jet had sat down on a pile of papers on a decrepit armchair, his head slumping on his shoulder. No help from him, then. 

Kobra was trying to attract his attention, by staring fixedly at him, but Poison wasn’t sure he wanted to listen to his brother’s opinion. He knew that ever since hearing of the prophecy for the first time, the blonde-haired Killjoy had been sceptical, his lack of belief steeming from the cult-like adoration of the Witch he saw in Poison. He knew it was his fault; believing so blindly in something he didn’t know the legend of only a year before, and basing all his hope for the future was pretty sudden.

Poison didn’t know how much time they could afford to lose to help someone that they weren’t even sure would repay them. Even more, fighting even more Dracs was meant as just more chances to get hurt or die on the spot, which wouldn’t help Ghoul in the slightest.

The redhead very firmly shut the part of his brain that was showing him Ghoul, his face impassive behind bars but his eyes betraying a tremendous amount of pain. Going into BLI alone, without a motor, was a death warrant if he ever knew one. Maybe helping the Girl would grant them some karma points with the Phoenix Witch, which couldn’t hurt. And if she didn’t, maybe that village in Zone 4 would be grateful for the help, and they probably would have some supplies to spare. Even if they succeeded in getting Ghoul out of BLI’s clutches without any exterior help, they wouldn’t have anywhere to crash, nor anything to drink or eat for more than a few days.

His decision made, Poison raised his head back again, ignoring Kobra to look directly into Dr D.’s eyes.

“Where’s that village, exactly?”

*

  
Rosalin had left Ghoul the promised second water bottle, and he had been able to drink his content, that was all the positive he had gotten in the last hours. The interrogator came back in at regular intervals, staying for a dozen minutes each time, trying to chip away his mistrust with nice openers and false compassion. But Ghoul could see through her like a window and wondered why they attributed the process of his interrogation to her. Either she was utterly incompetent at her job, or he had been misclassified as a nice lost citizen. Anyway, it was all good for him; at this point, the only thing he feared was getting bored to death — which seemed more likely with every hour that passed.

The woman kept asking him about his city name, but the last time she came her questions had evolved into something more precise. She dropped rebels names, at first ones Ghoul didn’t know, like some Cherri Cola guy and a Tommy Chow Mein. It was easy to feign ignorance, since it wasn’t, in fact, feigned at all. But then she branched off on names he _did_ know, like Doctor Death Defying and Show Pony. The first time she mentioned Poison, he had to tighten his grip on himself, his pinched lips not betraying him., his death stare perfected over the previous questions. She seemed to know of Poison and Kobra Kid, but no of Jet Star, which could explain why she didn’t seem to recognise him. It was usually the brothers that did the taunting, meaning that the other two could lay low. 

Ghoul had taken to answering in a sarcastic tone or raising his middle finger, but after a few sessions, he was growing tired of her incessant questioning. Didn’t the lady ever need to sleep? He did, at last, and getting interrupted every time he began to drift off was starting to get on his nerves. In the small hours of the morning, the Killjoy settled for laying back to the door, his arm contorted so that it lay on his ear without hurting his shoulder too much. He was trying to ignore the door opening and closing again and again, but it proved difficult.

At first, he had hoped he could just ambush Rosalin the next time the door would slide. A knock on the head and he would make his way out of there. But as the door had opened once more, he had noticed two armed guards on each side of the opening. They weren’t Draculoids; they were regular people, employees at BLI. They would probably be a bit more intelligent and basic levels of cunning wouldn’t be enough to allow him to escape.

It had now been a few hours since she had come in for the last time, breaking her pattern, and Ghoul was getting worried his easy, boring stay would turn into something else entirely. His presentiment was confirmed when the door opened, letting in three pairs of feet this time.

He turned on his cot, his breath getting stuck in his lungs. It was Korse, a Draculoid flanking him on each side. Ghoul scrambled to sit up, wincing.

“Killjoy”, Korse said, his face in a sneer. The mere word sufficed to make Ghoul need to repress the shiver that wanted to run through him. “Interrogator IR30P219 has been having… trouble with her assignments lately, as I’ve heard.”

It took Ghoul a few seconds to understand that the string of letters and numbers was referring to Rosalin. He stifled very firmly the part of him that felt sorry for her. She was an enemy interrogator, she had been trying to get him to betray his friends to snuff out all life in the desert. Being brainwashed wasn’t an excuse, and he couldn’t allow himself to feel any sympathy.

Korse was still talking. “So I’m the one that’s going to take care of your case now.” His face was bright with glee, his grey skin taut against his malicious grin.

Ghoul felt his stomach make a backflip. He was happy he hadn’t had the time to get up, because suddenly his legs felt like jelly. Keeping himself together, he sneered. “You’re not gonna have any more success than her, you sick bat.”

“That is yet to see, _Ghoulie_. Don’t forget that I can do this”, the exterminator said, signalling to the Dracs with his left hand, while his other one plunged into his pocket.

The Draculoids came onto Ghoul, taking one arm each, locking them behind his back before he had time to defend himself. He tried to get them off by struggling savagely, but his shoulder screaming in agony at the rough treatment convinced him to stop. They got him up firmly, stuck between the two of them.

“And this”, Korse continued, showing what he had in his hand to Ghoul. It was a knife, very sharp considering how carefully he handled it. The exterminator approached, the difference in size making Ghoul have to raise his head to follow the movement.

“And this.” Korse finished, his grin that of a maniac now. He dragged the blade lightly across Ghoul’s face, settling it just under his eye. The Killjoy held his breath, not daring to move nor to close his eye in fear of losing it.

“Don’t forget your little friends and I have some history. If they find it so amusing to mock me, I’ll find it amusing to make your face very funny to look at.” He pushed the knife a bit deeper, still not cutting into the skin but very nearly so. “But…” he withdrew the knife. “I feel magnanimous today. So, I won’t damage any _new_ part of you.”

Before Ghoul, puzzled, could make out what he meant, Korse slashed the knife across the bandage on his injured shoulder, tearing easily through it and opening up again the little healing that had taken place. The blade was so sharp the Killjoy didn’t feel anything at first, but when the pain hit, he let out a strangled groan, decided to not let Korse win this one.

“You’re a sick fuck”, he growled, teeth gritted. “I won’t say anything and you’ll gain nothing. You’re just going to lose your time.”

Korse had moved his knife into the hole in the shoulder of Ghoul’s shirt now, enlarging it until his bicep was on display. He drew a pattern of non-sensical shapes onto it, still not drawing blood.

“Who’s saying I’m doing this for information?” Korse said, his eyes gleaming with malice. “I’m not losing my time if I’m enjoying myself.” At this last word, he suddenly pushed on the knife, pushing the tip into Ghoul’s flesh. The movement sent a flash of pain through the Killjoy’s whole arm, his shoulder flaring up in response. Ghoul couldn’t say anything, gritting his teeth to not shout in pain taking all his concentration but still, at the same time, trying to get out of the Draculoids’ hold. They strengthened their grip, not allowing him to move so that Korse could go over the shapes he had traced just before, drawing blood this time. He passed over them over and over again, pressing the knife a little bit deeper each time, losing the clearness of the shape.

“I want it to scar”, he said, looking right into Ghoul’s eyes. You already know you won’t escape. But with this, even if you had the faintest hope of getting out of here, every time you’ll look at yourself, you’ll be reminded of our delightful little time together. Of _me._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, sorry about the delay. I TA for a guy that's never heard the word organization. Anyway, I don't have any lessons to give before a few weeks so next update should be on time.
> 
> Fun fact I forgot last chapter :   
> Rosaline is the name we gave to a wild kestrel for which we installed a birdhouse. In my country, they’re protected bc they lack places to raise their chicks safely. She found a mate, now we’re waiting to see if she’s gonna lay in the birdhouse (sometimes it can take up to a few years until they feel safe enough).
> 
> As always, comments and/or kudos are appreciated ;)
> 
> All the love Xx.


End file.
